Following an experimental period a firm decision has been made to run a separate IRM fleet at Skandia Cowes Week and to award top trophies, such as the Britannia Cup and New York Yacht Club Challenge Cup, to this fleet.

Two years ago the big racing boats at Cowes Week were on a dual scoring system so boats with IRM and IRC certificates finished off with two sets of results. Deemed not particularly satisfactory, with racing boats sailing against cruising boats, a new scheme was introduced last year separating IRC from the main fleet and giving them a regatta series over the first three days. This meant that if these boats wanted to race the remainder of the week they then had to go into the cruiser/racer IRC fleet.

Discussing the IRM decision Cowes Combined Clubs director Stuart Quarrie commented: “With the dual scoring system you get racing boats sailing against cruising boats, and the other problem is that optimisation criteria is different for the two rules. For example there are no crew weight limits in IRC whereas there are in IRM so you have to decide, if you go for dual scoring, which rules you want to race in, and then you can get a stupid situation where, for example, there’s a Farr 52 optimised for IRM and one optimised for IRC. As far as everyone is concerned, they’re both Farr 52s, but they’re actually in different modes.

“The IRM regatta last year sort of worked but the competitors missed out and the system gets very confusing. So, the class association decided that they would like to have racing all week. The CCC committee then looked at the allocation of trophies, or the individual clubs that give the trophies. After a long debate, it decided that as long as the IRM class had enough proper race boat entries, it was the appropriate class for the traditional big race trophies.”

It has to be said that there are several boats that don’t rate well under IRM and will rarely have the chance of winning the big trophies again. Quarrie cites Peter Ogden’sSpirit Of Jethou(pictured above), a new Swan 601, as an example. “She’s a beautiful, racy Swan, but she’s still a cruiser racer,” he states. “Although she has an IRM rating, she’s unlikely to do very well in IRM because she’s not a stiff, fast race boat with lots of sail area. Having said that, if it’s a day when there happens to be lots of reaching and waterline length counts then she could be in with a chance.”